Ultimate Sniper: One Shot, One Kill

[Phoenix042]

Point buy stats:
12 / 15 / 14 / 8 / 15 / 8
And go half-orc for:
14 / 15 / 15 / 8 / 15 / 8

Then go Assassin Rogue 19 / Fighter 1
Get Orcish fury (+1 con)
Get Magic Initiate (For hex)
Get Sharpshooter
Get 20 dex.

Then grab a +3 heavy crossbow and some +3 bolts and have someone cast flame arrows on them, and snipe people for 5d10 + 24d6 + 21 damage at +14 to hit (and advantage from attacking before they act). Total single-shot damage: 123.5, average.

Is there higher single-attack damage possible anywhere in this game?

[Kane0]

Couldn't a UA Twilight Druid combine Harvest Scythe with something like an upcast Magic Missile to deal 11d4+11 +20d10 damage or something like that? That'd average 148.5 force damage using a 9th slot and the whole pool instead of the magic items and flame arrows you'd need.

Wait, it'd be at least 1d10 less since you'd need to get MM somehow, Magic Initiate won't cut it for upcasting. Plus the interpretation of 'when you roll damage for a spell'

[Naanomi]

Bugbear sneak attack bonus is hard to beat for pure damage; and if ‘sniper’ can be melee then Booming Blade overwhelms most other options

[Phoenix042]

Couldn't a UA Twilight Druid combine Harvest Scythe with something like an upcast Magic Missile to deal 11d4+11 +20d10 damage or something like that? That'd average 148.5 force damage using a 9th slot and the whole pool instead of the magic items and flame arrows you'd need.

Wait, it'd be at least 1d10 less since you'd need to get MM somehow, Magic Initiate won't cut it for upcasting. Plus the interpretation of 'when you roll damage for a spell'

Unearthed Arcana is often extremely easy (if fun) to break horribly. Plus that's a pretty tenuous ruling on "when you roll damage for a spell."

And I'd argue "one shot" disqualifies a swarm of 11 magic missiles in any case. At that point, you should be comparing actions, not attacks, and then we start opening this up to Oathbow-wielding Champion Fighters and the like.

[Krii]

You can also add some1 casting Holy Weapon for you, thats also way better than flame arrows

[Phoenix042]

Bugbear sneak attack bonus is hard to beat for pure damage; and if ‘sniper’ can be melee then Booming Blade overwhelms most other options

Both fair points, bugbear comes close to adding this much damage to the attack, but saves us a feat pick (orcish fury) and gives us dex at 1st level (one fewer ASI there).

Is there anything particularly good we can do with that ASI for ranged attacks after sharpshooter?

In any case, we then have 2d10 + 28d6 + 21 damage, or 128, a little higher.

Can we do better?

What about hexblade? Go hexblade 9 (grab improved pact weapon), Assassin Rogue 11, (lets us drop magic initiate), and now we can smite for 6d8 damage at the cost of 4d6 sneak attack damage, plus hexblade's curse for +prof to damage.

Throw in martial adept in place of that ASI we're not spending on magic initiate anymore, and we've got:
2d10 + 12d8 + 22d6 + 27 = 167 damage.

Okay, now I suspect we've capped out. I don't see how we could beat damage like that packed behind a single attack with a ranged weapon.

Edit: Holy crap okay, forgot holy weapon exists. Lets say someone cast that on us as well, now it's:
2d10 + 16d8 + 22d6 + 27 = 185
Okay, that HAS to be the cap. We're almost at 200 damage in a single shot.

[Trickshaw]

I had a player bring one of these min/maxed uber dps builds to the table once.

Once.

When he discovered he couldn't rest immediately after blowing his proverbial load he wasn't having as much fun anymore.

[Phoenix042]

I had a player bring one of these min/maxed uber dps builds to the table once.

Once.

When he discovered he couldn't rest immediately after blowing his proverbial load he wasn't having as much fun anymore.

That sounds like an awful player.

I'll agree that we've got a lot of short rest resources we can spend all at once. But I don't really think this counts as a "one-and-done-chump" sort of thing either.

When we're not sniping for 185 damage in a single shot (and with thristing blade and crossbow expert, we can hit 300 when you add the second shot), we're still playing a rogue with 6d6 sneak attack dice, medium armor, hexblade features, and all the goodness of rogues rolled up in a character that makes two attacks every round just like the barbarian, but from possibly several hundred feet away.

It actually strikes me as a highly enjoyably build, with a surprisingly steady progression and a lot of ways to advance without dead levels or strange spikes. You could totally play this character from 1 - 20. You wouldn't be completely optimized at level 1 (no +3 cha, just +2), but play would feel satisfying at all levels.

Edit: I've also just realized after re-reading Hex Warrior, that you can have two weapons affected; one that you touch at the end of a long rest using hex warrior, and one keyed to your pact of the blade feature. This way, you can have a hand crossbow that you could switch to when you're not sniping people with your rifle.

Basically, you're a gun-slinging cowboy-style outlaw, with a cursed rifle at your back and a cursed pistol on your hip.

[Naanomi]

The high level assassin ‘double damage on a failed save’ is almost impossible to overcome in these damage challenges, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room in terms of builds.

Because of assassin’s ‘auto-crit’ ability, damage dice (which get doubled) actually outperform static damage bonuses. The 3d8 (13.5) from Booming Blade becomes 6d8 (27)... blowing Sharpshooter out of the water

[Phoenix042]

The high level assassin ‘double damage on a failed save’ is almost impossible to overcome in these damage challenges, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room in terms of builds.

Because of assassin’s ‘auto-crit’ ability, damage dice (which get doubled) actually outperform static damage bonuses. The 3d8 (13.5) from Booming Blade becomes 6d8 (27)... blowing Sharpshooter out of the water

I actually ignored the "death strike" feature for a few reasons while looking into this; I don't feel that it's properly in the spirit of this challenge because of all the ways to ignore or avoid it, making it very unreliable.

1st) At high level, lots of stuff has very strong Con saves.
2nd) Legendary Resistance is a thing. Your team is VERY unlikely to be able to burn through it before you attack.
3rd) Lots of features and spells grant bonuses or advantage on saving throws at this level.

Even for a theory-crafting thread, I think that assuming they fail a save after getting hit with your attack at 20th level is a pretty far stretch.


The auto-crit feature is why we go assassin, and sneak attack dice scale well enough to keep us there for 11 levels. I can't think of another class that gains bonus damage dice faster, even for a short time.

Meanwhile, smiting with a warlock slot when you hit a distant target with your crossbow feels pretty satisfying, especially since, years ago on my first reading of the paladin smite feature, I literally said out loud "Why the hell can't I make a ranged paladin and smite stuff with a bow!?"

[Naanomi]

Meh, you can miss an attack roll just like they can make a saving throw; it doesn’t mean Magic Missile is the highest damage option.

Theory crafting is all about raw numbers and impracticality in action. Ignoring the single highest damage enhancer and claiming you are the highest damage build seems odd to me; even if in actual play it wouldn’t do much more than remove a legendary save... heck, at high level play getting that Surprise Attack for the Bugbear ability/Assassin autocrit is super DM dependent and unreliable as well

[Unoriginal]

Pretty sure an Oathbow is going to do more damage than even a +3 heavy crossbow, if magic items are on the list.

Just my two cents.

[Citan]

Point buy stats:
12 / 15 / 14 / 8 / 15 / 8
And go half-orc for:
14 / 15 / 15 / 8 / 15 / 8

Then go Assassin Rogue 19 / Fighter 1
Get Orcish fury (+1 con)
Get Magic Initiate (For hex)
Get Sharpshooter
Get 20 dex.

Then grab a +3 heavy crossbow and some +3 bolts and have someone cast flame arrows on them, and snipe people for 5d10 + 24d6 + 21 damage at +14 to hit (and advantage from attacking before they act). Total single-shot damage: 123.5, average.

Is there higher single-attack damage possible anywhere in this game?
I would do it very differently myself, although I'll ask for confirmation from others as I'm making this from (blurry) memory, no time to look back on sources.

Devotion Paladin 3: Sacred Weapon (which of course means you won't hide).
Hexblade Blade Warlock 3/5 with Improved Pact Weapon and Eldricht Smite in case of, or Devil's Sight.
Rest Assassin Rogue

You lose 3d6 or 4d6 of Sneak Attack, but you...
- Can use Charisma for everything (start with 17 CHA, pick Elven Accuracy and +2 CHA + Sharpshooter, still space for Alert)
- Can easily stack another +1 (Invocation), +5 (Sacred Weapon) and +1 (Elemental Weapon, cast after conjuration but before Sacred Weapon) for a whopping +7 to stack on your normal attack chance (you could even eat further into Rogue to get Archery Style from Fighter or Ranger). So the +10 from Sharp is easy enough to apply when needed
- Get a good array of spells to use (Hex always, Bless also, and Darkness when your Sacred Weapon has been used already).
- Get the Hexblade's hex to be extremely good against one enemy.

Putting the cheese of "external" improvements (no magic weapon, no magic arrows, no flame arrows -by the way you forgot, if you want to push it, that you could also have a whole party buffing you with Foresight, Bless, upcast Elemental Weapon and Divine Favor XD), your build would end as a +11 to hit (I'll let you calculate the "raw" damage from just build features).
This one would consistently hit with at least +6+5+1=12 all day, and up to 17 with one turn of preparation, up to >20 if time to prepare and decide the fight moment every short rest, not accounting for advantage.

Damage on mundane turn would be 1d10 (weapon die) +5 (CHA) +1 (Improved Pact Weapon) +10 (Sharpshooter) + 7d6, min 24, average 46.
Nova damage against one particular surprised enemy would be the previous + 3d8 (smite) + 6/1d8 (Hex feature or Hex spell), with all dice doubled if surprised, and probably 99% chance to hit whatever target since auto-advantage from surprise + Elven Accuracy, without even using any special, resource-consuming feature apart from Hex feature (not spell).
So 2*(1d10+7d6+3d8)+5+1+10+6...
- minimum 2*(1+7+3)+22 = 44.
- average = 2*(5.5+24.5+13.5)+22 = 2*43.5+22 = 87+22 = 109.

Which is overall a bit lesser but imo damn close to the previous one, except...
- You don't depend on any item nor any 'external' buff
- You have a much, much higher chance to hit unless the enemy has a "source of disadvantage" that would nullify the advantage provided by Assassinate (with Elven Accuracy and your standard to-hit, you chance to auto-fail -rolling 1 on three die- is less than 1%, and your chance to roll at least a 8 to hit an AC 20 creature is ~4%).
- And the only resource you used is either a spell (which, being upcast, may have been sustained since before last short rest) or a short-rest rechargeable feature.

In fact I'd even consider eating two more Rogue levels (so 1d6 more) to get Fighter for Archery (+14 to hit stat, +19 with Sacred Weapon) and Action Surge (depending on situation, on your assassination turn, you could Dash into a better position, Hide after attacking, or prebuff your attack with Bless / Elemental Weapon / Sacred Weapon / etc).

Basically you can deal above 100 damage with extremely high reliability and without any resource consumption every time you surprise an enemy (which should be easy enough to do with Expertise in Stealth and Darkness). :)

[Phoenix042]

Meh, you can miss an attack roll just like they can make a saving throw; it doesn’t mean Magic Missile is the highest damage option.

Are you trying to make the argument that attack rolls and saving throws aren't qualitatively different just because they both *can* fail?

I think we can both agree that a party has a lot more control over their attack rolls than they do over their enemies saving throws. Part of the purpose of theory crafting a high single-damage attack is to make accuracy buffs more valuable. Bless, bardic inspiration, and many others exist in this edition, and it's likely that your party has one or two of them.

I'd argue that, while highest possible damage in one attack comes from death strike at 17th level, there's a significant place in optimization discussion for "the highest damage that results from a single attack roll," and that's really what I'm after here.

As an unrelated side benefit, those first 5 levels of warlock also nets you thirsting blade for a second attack. During your surprise round, this gives you a second chance if your first attack misses, and makes you much better when you're not sniping people from a million miles away.



Theory crafting is all about raw numbers and impracticality in action. Ignoring the single highest damage enhancer and claiming you are the highest damage build seems odd to me; even if in actual play it wouldn’t do much more than remove a legendary save... heck, at high level play getting that Surprise Attack for the Bugbear ability/Assassin autocrit is super DM dependent and unreliable as well

I'd argue that Legendary Resistance should have the right to pull up a chair in our white room. It's not a big, uncertain variable that we can't expect at every table or every session; it's a ubiquitous feature of BBEGs everywhere, written into the stat blocks of our enemies, right there for us to see and count on. It may be that many optimizers pretend that it doesn't exist or hand-wave it away, but that doesn't mean we have to.

Besides, it applies to us especially harshly; how many of the other ultra-optimized saving-throw-targeting builds can ONLY do their thing if they have surprise?

I think a surprise round is a special case; it's a uniquely likely time for the BBEG to have legendary resistance still up when we take our turn, and therefore hits Assassin Rogues especially hard. That doesn't make death strike a bad feature, just limits its applicability to this idea a little.

[Fire Tarrasque]

If you use Mercer's gunslinger, (http://www.dmsguild.com/product/170778/Gunslinger-Martial-Archetype-for-Fighters) you can TURN IT UP TO ELEVEN. Like seriously, what you can do is just plain scary.

Here, i'll show you, at sixth level.
Variant Human, using point buy for
15 dex
15 wis.
Add one to both using V human, for
16 dex.
16 wis.
Now, we break the game. Or at least Mercer's homebrew game.

3 fighter.
3 rogue.
Aquire the Bad News weapon. However, since I won't take it TOO far and just assume it's a rifle, for a d10 like longbow. Just know, this could be done with 2d12 instead. With the Violent Shot ability, you can use all three charges for 4d10 damage. (It adds one damage die, not double damage.) Sharpshooter it for 4d10+13. Add in Sneak Attack for 4d10+2d6+13. Double it with a natural twenty. 8d10+4d6+13. For an average of 64. At level SIX.
Now let's turn it up to eleven. Level 20. So we get to double damage AGAIN! Yay. (Oh, and if your interested, with Bad News your doing 9d12+4d6+13, or an average of 75. Ha. )

For your ASIs, up your Dex and Wis to 20. YAY. Then, take the Martial Adept feat. Because it let's us add another D6 using Precision Strike. Yay. Nothing else matters.

Now, with our standard attack, we can use violent shot 5 times. 6d10. We also have 9d6 sneak attack, and 1d6 from Martial Adept. And of course, a +15 from Dex and Sharpshooter. For a total of 6d10+10d6+15. CRITICAL HIT 12d12+20d6+15. FAILED THEIR SAVE 24d10+40d6+30. (Damage is doubled, not a standard crit.) That's 270 average damage with no magic.
(Bad News net's us 28d12+40d6+30, or 318. Everyone loves 318 damage in one attack.)

Matthew Mercer, while a fine DM, messed up a bit on this homebrew. This isn't exactly related, but it's the closest shot i'm going to get.
Yay.

[Naanomi]

We can slap purple worm poison on most of these attacks

[Phoenix042]

I would do it very differently myself, although I'll ask for confirmation from others as I'm making this from (blurry) memory, no time to look back on sources.

We've already changed the build above into a hexblade 9 / assassin rogue 11, losing 4d6 sneak attack and gaining 6d8 smite, but I'll take a look at your build here.


Devotion Paladin 3: Sacred Weapon (which of course means you won't hide).
Sacred weapon eats your action and sheds light. Only way to get surprise while it's active is to betray your allies or slaughter a blind beggar, and at that point I'm not sure why you needed it active in the first place. Plus it only buffs accuracy, and we can get accuracy really high without it.

Divine smite also only works on melee weapons.

I don't think paladin levels help us.


Hexblade Blade Warlock 3/5 with Improved Pact Weapon and Eldricht Smite in case of, or Devil's Sight.
Rest Assassin Rogue

Hexblade works shockingly well for this, but no way would we ever stop at 3 (only hand crossbows at that point). I'd originally thought hexblade 5 / assassin 15, but hexblade 9 is more damage on our single shot attack, plus then we can cast hex in the morning once and have it up all day.



- Can easily stack another +1 (Invocation), +5 (Sacred Weapon) and +1 (Elemental Weapon, cast after conjuration but before Sacred Weapon) for a whopping +7 to stack on your normal attack chance (you could even eat further into Rogue to get Archery Style from Fighter or Ranger). So the +10 from Sharp is easy enough to apply when needed

I see what you've done; you've built an extremely accurate attack, but not necessarily aimed for the highest damage possible.

I think at 20th you end up with +17 to hit, but no real way to get advantage (so your elven accuracy doesn't help you), or +12 to hit and triple advantage, and with sharpshooter, +7 to hit and triple advantage.


Putting the cheese of "external" improvements

Actually, I like that. Let's take a look at our Hexblade 9 / Assassin 11 without external buffs.

I've realized since last night that banishing smite works with ranged weapons and can be cast in the same turn as eldritch smite, allowing us to possibly replace hex with 5d10 damage instead of 1d6. We also can't reasonably mark them with hexblades curse if we do that, so we'll also lose the +6 from that. It's okay though, because we also lose the curse's fairly short range limitation; now we can fire out to the crossbow's long range without penalty, all without any time spent pre-buffing.

Here we go, lets take a surprise round shot and see how we do:
Prof + Cha + Invocation = 12 to hit, no bonus from magic items so +7 after sharpshooter.
Advantage from assassinate, so our odds of hitting a 20 AC are about 65%.
On a hit, we deal 2d10 (weapon) + 2d6 (Martial Adept) + 4d6 (Bugbear) + 12d6 (sneak attack) + 12d8 (eldritch smite) + 10d10 (banishing smite) + 5 (cha) + 10 (sharpshooter) + 1 (improved pact weapon), total = 12d10 + 18d6 + 12d8 + 16, or 199 damage.
From one bolt. No external buffs. And if he's only got 50 hp left or less, you banish him too. And he's prone.
And if we miss, we lose NONE of those resources and can try again immediately. If either of those attacks misses by 1 - 3 points, we can roll a d6 to boost our accuracy and likely turn a miss into a hit, losing only 7 damage in the trade.

Actually, as I'm saying that, I'm realizing that without accuracy buffs this build is likely to want to NOT use sharpshooter when sniping, in cases when her enemies AC is likely really high. That's ironic. We invest resources into a feat to be a better sniper, but using that feat when accuracy matters most makes you a worse sniper.

This all becomes much more reliable if you're blessed or have a bardic inspiration die, and with a magic bolt or two, you're VERY accurate. We ignored that for our unbuffed calculations, but lets do the quick crunch for a super-mega-buffed shot:
Attack: Prof + Cha + Item + Arrow + Bless + BI + EW - SS = 15 + 1d4 + 1d8 = +22 to hit, average.
Damage: 2d10 Base + 2d6 Martial + 4d6 Bugbear + 12d6 SA + 12d8 ES + 10d10 BS + 6d4 EW + 4d8 HW + 2d6 FA + Cha + SS + Weapon + Arrow, or:
Damage = 12d10 + 20d6 + 16d8 + 6d4 + 21 = 244 damage.

Bad news: It burned your parties resources. Like all of them.
Good news: The tarrasque's half dead, and as they say in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, "he gets another shot."

Out of curiosity, what's that one look like?
It's at only 17 to hit (oh noes) unless you rolled higher than an 8 last attack on either of your d20's, in which case you've still got bardic inspiration. Lets just call it 17, and go with that.
Damage: 2d10 + 14d6 + 6d4 + 4d8 + 21 = 131 damage on that second shot. A little over half.

So 199 damage without external buffs. Can we go higher?

Can we get over 200?

[Naanomi]

Purple Wurm Poison is 12d6 (save for half), if we can assume all that magic weaponry this should be easily assumed as well for another +21 on average (since we are assuming saves always pass in this attempt)

[Phoenix042]

Purple Wurm Poison is 12d6 (save for half)

So then our 244 damage can jump to 265 - 286. Requires that you spend an action adding it, but this IS on the super buffed shot.

If we switch to an oathbow, we've now got 6d6 more dice to roll, but 4 less damage in other places, netting us another 17 damage for 282 - 303 if they fail their save.

[koeuji]

It actually strikes me as a highly enjoyably build, with a surprisingly steady progression and a lot of ways to advance without dead levels or strange spikes. You could totally play this character from 1 - 20. You wouldn't be completely optimized at level 1 (no +3 cha, just +2), but play would feel satisfying at all levels.



Being pretty new to 5e, and not well-versed in the intricacies of optimization and multiclass progression, how would one go about progressing a hexblade 9/assassin rogue 11, from 1-20 in an enjoyable fashion? Asking for a friend :).

EDIT: Ah, I just noticed the post in the other warlock thread wherein the build was explained. Feel free to ignore this post. Thanks!

[Phoenix042]

Being pretty new to 5e, and not well-versed in the intricacies of optimization and multiclass progression, how would one go about progressing a hexblade 9/assassin rogue 11, from 1-20 in an enjoyable fashion? Asking for a friend :).

Depends heavily on your race choices and which books you have access to. You could go eladrin like the other post, focus charisma, and start hexblade till level 5.

If you go bugbear (like we did in this thread), I'd start rogue and stay there for a little while, at least until assassinate was online. Once you had 4 levels of rogue, you'd start down hexblade until that was level 5, picking up the necessary invocations (improved pact weapon, eldritch smite, thirsting blade), and now you can do the basic trick of this build (surprise someone, then stack a smite spell on top of a regular smite attack to deal positively immoral quantities of damage to them).

When you don't have surprise, just hex people and shoot them with your crossbow (grab crossbow expert whenever you hit warlock 4, so that when you get thirsting blade you can use that extra attack).

Once you've gotten to warlock 5, go back to rogue and finish out those 11 rogue levels, ending at Assassin 11 / Hexblade 5, then take your last four levels in hexblade.

Pick up all the smite spells (drop them as you replace them, though. No sense wasting spells known).

For bonus points, avoid getting eldritch blast, just to stick it to all those lame "vanilla" warlocks who all get it.

You could really not worry that much about cha with this character, actually. Just do this:
Point buy:
8 / 15 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 14
Plus racials for:
10 / 16 / 14 / 8 / 12 / 14

Level progression:
Rogue 1 (expertise in stealth, plus anything else)
Rogue 2
Assassin Rogue 3 (Surprise round attack snapshot: Attack +5, damage 10d6 + 3 (38), at level 3!)
Assassin Rogue 4 (+2 dex)
Hexblade 1 (hex, wrathful smite) (Surprise round attack snapshot: Attack +7, damage 12d6 + 4 (46))
Hexblade 2 (invocations don't matter; we're swapping them both out)
Hexblade 3 (Branding smite, pact of the blade, swap an invocation for improved pact weapon, get a great crossbow)
Hexblade 4 (Crossbow Expert)
Hexblade 5 (Eldritch Smite, swap the other level 2 invocation for thirsting blade)

Quick snapshot of your attacks: With +10 to hit and two attacks, you deal 1d10 + 3d6 + 5 damage on your first hit and 1d10 + 1d6 + 5 on your second hit in a normal round. Thats 21 and 14, respectively. Not bad, but if you get surprise, your attacks are made with advantage and become 2d10 + 10d6 + 5 (can smite for 8d8 more) and 2d10 + 2d6 + 5 (can smite for 8d8 more). That's 51 (or 87 with smite) damage, and 21 (or 55 with smite). If you hit and smite with two surprise round attacks, you're already hitting 132 damage at level 9. If you miss with your first attack, your second attack's damage gets upgraded to what your first attack would have done (51 or 87 with smite).

Now you want to just keep progressing in assassin rogue for the rest of your ASI's and those really handy rogue features. You'll grab uncanny dodge and evasion, expertise in two more skills, and reliable talent. Oh, and 4d6 more sneak attack dice. Those are handy even when we don't get surprise, as I'm sure anyone who's ever played a rogue can tell you.

After you hit 11th level in rogue (pick up +2 dex and sharpshooter at 8th and 10th, respectively), just round off with 4 more levels of hexblade, and grab banishing smite when you hit 9th level. With your last ASI (at warlock 8), just pick whatever sounds fun (for my build, I grabbed martial adept, for those times when I need just a touch more accuracy or want to boost my damage, but honestly, lucky is probably better at this).

The reason you split from rogue at level four is because that's when you've got your ASI, but now you don't want to delay warlock anymore.

Even well before you hit 9th level, this build should provide you with all the goodness of bugbear assassins, plus a splash of eldritch power once you hit hexblade one and pick up hex and hexblade's curse (which I didn't factor into my damage above).

Then go do your 199 damage attack, even if the DM won't give you any neat toys and your friends don't want to help you.

[koeuji]

Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown, really appreciate it. A lot for me to ponder between this and the alternative build in the other warlock thread. We're going to be rolling 4d6k3 for ability scores so we'll see how those pan out :).

Cheers!

[MrStabby]

Personally I think the most apt "one shot, one kill" character must have disintegrate.

[Phoenix042]

Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown, really appreciate it. A lot for me to ponder between this and the alternative build in the other warlock thread. We're going to be rolling 4d6k3 for ability scores so we'll see how those pan out :).

Cheers!

No problem, I like doing stuff like this and I was already thinking through how the build progression should go. Between these two threads, I think we've got a solid approach either way, but I'm tempted to advise you to go the dex route either way at this point. It's better for your initiative, which is always a good thing but becomes MUCH more valuable in this build than it is for a typical character.

Eladrin might be the more balanced and stat-appropriate race for this, depending in what rolls you get.

Starting either rogue or warlock works well, although if you go warlock, your crossbow will be strictly inferior to eldritch blast until you hit 3rd level. Assassin 4 might be the better kit to grab first, now I've thought about it.


Personally I think the most apt "one shot, one kill" character must have disintegrate.

Well lets see. An assassin 3 / caster 17 who upcasts disintegrate in a 9th level slot during a surprise round will deal 38d6 + 40 damage, which comes out to 173.

That's really good. That's better than I thought we could get with a spell. No smites or anything, but that's probably fine. Doesn't require pre-buffing, feat investment, or anything.

What that tells me is that our sniper's damage isn't some ridiculously broken stat we somehow conjured with our dark, optimizer magic, but is instead a reasonable estimate of what the designers though aught to be possible with some resource investment and build synergy at higher levels. There's no way they didn't ask "what if they crit with it?" when they wrote disintegrate.

So I suppose I should look at if a sorcerer uses metamagic on it.

So a sorcerer with empower would roll 38 dice, then reroll any 5 of them. I'm not sure of a method for calculating this exactly (someone with more statistics could probably tell us) but I can use a pretty good approximate method; we can basically assume that at least 5 1's show up in the roll, since the odds that there aren't at least 5 1's is something like 3.4 *10^-39.

So if we assume he ends up rerolling 5 1's, then he essentially turns those 1's into 3.5's, for a total average damage increase of 12.5, making our average damage 185.

I just want to point out that the sorcerer can twin this.

Are there other ways to boost the damage of high level spells like this using build resources only?

Are there any external buffs we could apply? I'm not as familiar with the magic-user magic items in this edition.